I drove home Wednesday night from our Bluebonnet Storytellers of New Braunfels meeting inspired to tell more fairy tales.  I tend to tell folk tales and personal tales because they work for me in the elementary schools. But, after listening to my friend and storyteller, Mary Grace Ketner, present her fairy tale workshop, I'm convinced that fairy tales absolutely need to be added to my repertoire. Mary Grace's Blog is filled with 26 magical days of genres found in the 398.2 section of the library (folk and fairy, legends, myths, and fables). You'll discover more about the tales' protagonists and villains, along with other scholarly works that accompany them. Mary Grace wrote: 

She  shared that fairy tales take place anywhere and pull us, the readers, into the story, living vicariously through them, experiencing what they experienced. The setting is often introduced to us with a dysfunctional environment in which characters must move from unhealthy to healthy, thus empowering themselves and allowing the "Happily Ever After" - ready for whatever comes next. Magic intervenes to transform the tale from less healthy to more healthy.

Mary Grace suggested that it's often the protagonist who is transformed. We took a glimpse into Grimm's "Twelve Dancing Princesses" in which the king learned eventually that his daughters' behavior was pretty normal for girls their age.  After several failed attempts by many a prince to unveil where the daughters danced each night, a clever old soldier  took on the challenge. Given a magical invisibility cloak, this soldier followed the princesses down into another enchanting world in which he too participated in the hours of dancing.  Evidence was collected and brought to the king on the fourth day.  According to many versions of this Grimm's tale, this is where the King allows the old soldier to choose his bride from the daughters.    Mary Grace mentioned to us that she had heard another ending she liked where the soldier explained that he was too old for his daughters but knew of twelve, well deserved princes not too far from this castle who would love to marry his daughters. The king listened and granted this favor to his daughters.


If you were wishing you had been at Mary Grace's workshop, don't fret because  she'll be presenting  
“The Genre Wrench: Choosing the Right Tool for the Right Tale” on 
Friday, March 13th, at the Texas Storytelling Festival. Here is the description:


Telling a legend like a fairy tale drains it of its “legendary” power. Telling a fairy tale as though it were a fable sucks much of the magic right out! Listeners may be amused by the story, but not really satisfied.  Try using the “Genre Wrench”! This ordinary tool yields surprising results to help you tune up your stories and rev up the power of your programs.


Thanks to Mary Grace for allowing me to share her fairy tale workshop highlights. I encourage you to stop by her website and blog. Mary Grace is a fabulous storyteller who's talents are shared in classrooms, libraries, festivals, and special events!


I'd love to hear from you about your thoughts on fairy tales!

PreK4SA (our city of San Antonio Prekindergarten Program) hired me to share the craft of storytelling and storytelling activities conducive to the developmental stages of very young children. Four all day sessions were filled with enthusiastic teachers and paraprofessionals who participated with the hope of enriching their curriculum with oral stories that would encourage both listening skills and communication.

In my 33 years of teaching, 9 years were as a kindergarten teacher so I brought that experience with me along with my storytelling experiences and resources.

A fabulous book resource that I highly recommend is Teaching with Story: Classroom Connections to Storytelling by Margaret Read MacDonald, Jennifer MacDonald Witman, and Nathaniel Forrest Whitman (all in the family). PreK4SA bought this book for all of the participants of our storytelling consortium.

This book is filled with age appropriate stories and activities to follow in the curriculum so the youngsters can interact through predictable lines in the story, rhymes, role play, puppetry, and story draw.

What is story draw? Teaching with Story use a wonderful old drawing story of "Tommy and Sally." As you tell a tale, you are drawing features of the story and by the end of the tale you have created a picture of an object related to your story. The teachers and their students LOVED this tale found on page 145. I changed their names to "Tomas and Sara" and you could change the names also along with the two letters used to begin the simple tale. We practiced as a group retelling this drawing story before the teachers felt comfortable taking it back to their classrooms. Many of the workshop participants came back for all 4 of the sessions with wonderful stories of their storytelling successes in their classes.

Practicing our storytelling skills at home, away from the club for two weeks at a time, is often times difficult for the kids. We tend to check out favorite books from the 398.2 section of our library and supposedly read that book at least 5 times to really comprehend the tale, pick up a theme, and realize that we could actually tell that story in our own words, using our own experiences.

Well, that sounds real good and makes total sense, and actually works for a handful of my students; but, there's that other group of kids that just don't dive into the tale hook, line and sinker. I thought about my own two boys and knew they could listen, over, and over again to stories I told them. They also LOVED to listen to certain storytellers on "cassette tapes" and DVD's. Those aural listeners are in my club also so why not offer other tales that are out there on podcasts and streaming from You Tube.

Homework: Use the list I provided of tales that I found to be wonderful for 2nd - 5th graders or ask Mom or Dad to tell a tale you'd like to listen to and then try out ourself.  Can't wait to see if this works! The students are to place the story they chose to listen to (at least a few times) on a bare bones index card so the story will always be with them.
I've attached my list below. Fingers are crossed!

I just completed four full day storytelling sessions with preK4SA (Pre Kindergarten Professional Development through the City of San Antonio, TX) inviting teachers and paraprofessionals to participate for free in various storytelling workshops that integrate this ancient art into the curriculum enriching the students and their teachers!

Since my last blog dealt with tandem telling with my storytelling club, I wanted to share how our teachers did with tandem telling. We gathered all that we learned in two sessions and choose a story to tell from Margaret Read MacDonaldʻs book entitled Teaching with Story: Classroom Connections to Storytelling These woderful women decided to work on the West African Folktale entitled "How to Break a Bad Habit."  We learned how to create our "Bare bones" story on index cards to basically have an outline of our story. They did a fantastic job after practicing for only 30 minutes. 


Below is a short vido of three members of my storytelling club ranging from 3rd grade to 5th adapting the funny tale of "No News." I loved their adaption of this tale - yes the dog dies, but no mother-in-law death - just a burnt book, candles, Halloween scary stories, and a burned down barn and house - other than that, "there ain't been no news."

We're having a fantastic storytelling year at Tuscany Heights Elementary School in San Antonio, TX. Our storytelling club meets after school twice a month and is filled with group storytelling practices, mini lessons, and several opportunities to share "mostly" polished stories inside and outside the school.

In our last session, I introduced to the 2nd - 5th graders another form of telling using two tellers to share one tale. Folk tales with two main characters and fables lend quite well to tandem telling. I used two stories from Margaret Read MacDonald's book Teaching with Story: Classroom Connections to Storytelling to share with our 30 students. The first was "Grandfather Bear Is Hungry" (pp. 14-15) and "Pig and Bear Big Business" (p.90)

After modeling tandem telling with another storytelling sponsor, the kids chose their partners and practiced in the various nooks and crannies of the library. As much fun as we had, it was evident to all of them that this was harder than they thought.

We'll be meeting back again on Tuesday to review a few tips:

1. Decide when to narrate and when to be the character
2. Decide what to do when you are not speaking (eye contact with the character speaking, turned around if not introduced yet, hunched over if you are a small character, etc.)
3. Gestures and voice toward the audience
4. Sharing some repeating phrases together

A volunteer sponsor and I will share out the wonderful "No News" told by Connie Regan-Blake and Barbara Freeman. The kids always get a kick out of this hilarious cause-effect southern disaster tale. You can find this story in Best-Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival, 20th Anniversary Edition (p. 217)